Monarch Insider No. 23- CAA Tourney Preview

It's a great time of year to be a basketball fan.
The CAA Tournament starts on Friday. Old Dominion's men's team goes in on a roll, having won 10 of its past 11 games. As the Tournament's defending champion, the Monarchs aren't eager to surrender their crown. Practice has been fierce all week, with every player right down to the redshirts diving all over the practice gym after loose balls.

The Monarchs will take the court on Saturday at 6 p.m. for their quarter-final match, against the winner of Delaware and Northeastern. The UD/NU game is one of four high-stakes contests on Friday, where the loser will see their NCAA Tournament dreams end for the year.

Many Monarch fans make the trip to Richmond for the Friday games, even though ODU has never had to play in the CAA Tournament's first round. Monarch Basketball Insider will be there this year as well.
I'll be in Richmond, starting with the CAA Tournament banquet on Thursday night. I'll issue daily reports in this space, wrapping up each of five very full days of basketball action.

But since there is so much happening during CAA Tournament weekend, we've created a Monarch Basketball Insider live blog, which will update constantly throughout the weekend. I'll be posting video and pictures. I'll be tweeting. I'll write little anecdotes from Tournament weekend.

You can find the Monarch Basketball Insider live blog at http://monarchbasketballinsider.blogspot.com/. You'll also be able to find a link to the blog on the ODU.edu website. If you'd like to send me your own thoughts, pictures and memories from the CAA Tournament as you create them, feel free to email me at pjaarm@gmail.com.

Lauren Scolamiero, an ODU alumna and basketball fan, will be posting first-person reports throughout the weekend on the blog as well. I'll be sitting courtside in a shirt and tie. Lauren will be painted up in the student section. In the nosebleed seats. At ODU fan parties. Her reports will add to the pageantry and color that is CAA Tournament weekend.

One more thing. I'm obviously a huge basketball fan, a fan of ODU basketball in particular. I'll let you in on a little secret: I'm incredibly terrible at actually playing basketball. Here's a column I wrote in WYDaily about my love affair with watching basketball, and my struggles playing it:
http://www.wydaily.com/blogs/white-knuckles/5995-white-knuckles-my-basketball-passion.html.
Let's go Monarchs! Back-to-back championships here we come.